


Parallels

by nemo_baker



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Complete, Episode: s01e04 Cyberwoman, Episode: s01e06 Countrycide, Episode: s01e13 The Parting of the Ways, Episode: s02e05 Adam, Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, Episode: s03e04 Children of Earth - Day 4, F/M, M/M, Minor Violence, Torchwood One, doctor who - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:24:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4261539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nemo_baker/pseuds/nemo_baker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter what you do, it has been done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parallels

**Author's Note:**

> While working on a longer project, my brain sort of had an explosion of headcanons surrounding Lisa/Canary Wharf. So uh… this is those. Basically a large bucket of Ianto angst with side Jack angst and blatant abuses of parallelism.

  
**Where The Similarities Begin**

“They’re about to reach this floor.”

“I’m trying, Ianto. I’m trying.”

He kicked the door uselessly.

“Careful, you’re going to need that foot for running.”

“Lisa–”

“Just give me a minute.”

“We don’t _have–”_

“Got it! Overriding lockdown,” She stepped away from the computer monitor. “Door will disengage in fifteen. Where are we going to go?”

“Out of Research, towards the Left Wing stairs.”

“Make for the main entrance?”

“No, it’ll be overrun. Archives.”

“What?” She looked at him incredulously. “There’s no way out down there.”

“We’re not getting out, we’re hiding.”

The door finally, mercifully, slid open. Ianto walked tentatively over the threshold and peeked around the doorframe. The hallway was clear. He stepped into the hall and motioned for Lisa to follow.

“If they’re on the left stairs, we’ll go back and try the right. Once we’re in the Archives, we’ll barricade ourselves in the sublevels.”

 

Lisa nodded, then caught his gaze. “I love you.”

“It sounds an awful lot like you’re saying goodbye.”

“Might be.”

“Don’t. We’ll be fine.”

Regimented, mechanical footsteps echoed down the hallway. He seized Lisa’s hand.

_“Run.”_

\---

“I love you.”

“Don’t.”

Ianto understood, of _course_ he did, why Jack didn’t say it back.  
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

They had been locked in Research 5. The quickest way to the Archives was by crossing Research 1, four floors below.

They stood at the foot of the staircase, hardly daring to breathe as they watched the shadows of Cybermen passing by the entryway. As well as the same pounding of metal feet, they heard hysterical voices. The gruesome sound of saws ripping through flesh and bone. Guttural, almost inhuman, shrieks of pain.

_“You will be upgraded.”_

_“You will become like us.”_

They waited for what felt like hours, until the Cybermen were more distant. Clutching each other, they inched through the door. Everything was completely torn apart, the wiring of Torchwood’s systems diverted to conversion tables set up in the center of the room. The smoking remains of the original system lay strewn across the floor. Cybermen led their victims to the units, strapping them inside one by one.

“They’re converting whole bodies,” Lisa breathed.

Ianto looked away, fighting the urge to be sick. He could feel terror clawing at him, ripping at the threads connecting him to reality. They moved to crouch silently behind a desk, waiting for a chance to make a run for it to the other side of the room.

 _“Unprocessed humans detected.”_ Ianto froze.

A Cyberman came into sight. Ianto stared into the black depths of it’s eyes.

 _“All Torchwood personnel are to be upgraded.”_  
  
Lisa screamed and he jumped up, dragging her with him.

_“You will be upgraded.”_

Full-blown panic set in and all he could register over the ringing in his ears was his brain chanting at him to _run, run, run_. He could see the entrance to the Archives and ignored the imagined sensation of knives tearing into his body, rearranging him into something twisted and evil.

He never registered Lisa’s fingers slipping from his grasp.

\---

“Are you here to retcon me?”

The first sentence Ianto had spoken to him since the beginning of his suspension. Jack turned to look at the other man. He was standing near the entrance to the kitchen and meeting Jack’s eyes with an expression of fierce calm. Up until this point, Ianto had been wandering around the flat aimlessly since Jack arrived half an hour ago. Jack hadn’t commented, realizing that it was probably the first time since the incident that Ianto had seen another human being.

“Do you want me to?”

“Doesn’t really matter what I want, does it?”

“Of course it does.”

“Alright. Then I elect to continue being eaten alive by guilt, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“So you _do_ think you’re guilty.” The threat to watch Jack ‘suffer and die’ had made that a bit ambiguous.

“Of course I do. Three people died because of me. But you’re guilty too.”

“Three?”

“It’s my fault she was converted.”

“No. It’s not.”

Ianto didn’t answer for a moment. He appeared to be debating whether he wanted to tell Jack any more.

“I let go.” He finally murmured. His fists clenched, and Jack knew Ianto was trying to stop them from shaking.

“What do you mean?”

“During the battle. We were running and I let go of her hand.”

Jack froze.

“She should have been right behind me, but I turned around and she was gone.”

“Ianto...” He understood.

\---

 _"Take Gray, keep him safe."_  
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

It wasn’t until he reached Sublevel 2 that he realized she was gone. He felt his heart, which had been beating wildly, freeze in his chest.

He had to go back.

But at that moment, the room went dark and the door he had run through slammed shut. The only light came from the computer monitor in the center of the room.

**Power Fluctuations Detected: Automatic Lockdown Sequence Engaged.**

_“No!”_

He flung himself towards the exit.

“Lisa!” His fingers bled as he clawed at the metal frame. Pointlessly. Desperately.

He stepped back to brace himself against a file cabinet, already attempting to calculate target stress points on the door.

\---

“Nice thought,” Tosh said, redirecting her torch to the floor of the cellar. “But it’s reinforced,”

With the options being try, or get eaten, he tried.

\---

To no avail. All he could do was wait.

He sat for what seemed like hours. The terror and destruction beyond transformed into muffled background noise that leaked through the walls. Ianto sat on the floor and shook, silently pleading for someone to help or for the world to go ahead and fucking _end already._ As long as he went with it.

As long as he never had to feel this helpless ever again.

They found him eventually. The door was blown away and three towering, metal figures stepped into the room. Even as Ianto backed against the wall, he felt resigned.

 _“You are Torchwood personnel. You will submit to upgrading.”_ They surrounded him.

“No,” he croaked. “I won’t.”

_“Then, you are incompatible. You will be deleted.”_

“I kind of figured that.”

\---

With those words, Jack dropped his weapon to the floor of Level 500. He threw his arms wide.

The Dalek’s beam hit him straight in the chest.

\---

But for Ianto, the final blow never came.  
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“I can feel it inside my head.”

Ianto looked up at Lisa. He had been fiddling with a bit of wiring on the life support system (he refused to think of it as anything else).

“What?”

“The Cybernetic programming. It… it’s there. In the back of my mind.”

“We’ll fix it.”

“Ianto, it keeps telling me to _kill_ you, to make you like me. You have to–”

“I’m already like you. You’re human.”

“But–”

“And you’re not a murderer.”

\---

“Something in me wants to kill.” Tears slid down Ianto’s face. He wanted more than anything to be repulsed by the memories dancing before his eyes.

“No. This isn’t you.”

Jack’s hand slammed down on the lie detector, and the green light went dark.

“Something’s changed you. You’re not a murderer, I’m certain of it.”

Jack stood from the desk and strode past him, placing a comforting hand briefly on his shoulder as he went.

Ianto wasn’t ready to contemplate what Jack’s faith meant.  
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  
**And Where They End**

In the early hours of the morning, Ianto was awake. Jack lay beside him, his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling in time with his even breaths. A small smile lit Jack’s face, and Ianto wondered at the peacefulness of a man who embodied chaos. A man who defied laws set down by time and space, and watched them bend before him.

A man who snored.

Ianto inched closer, careful not to wake his bed partner, and acknowledged his love of chaos. It wasn’t that he saw Jack as a puzzle that needed to be solved, or that he wanted to be the one to impose order on the other man. He simply marveled at the fact that there would always be more to understand.

His idea of a perfect life had once been to settle down with the woman he loved. If she was still alive, he was sure that dream would have remained. In finding Jack, he had discovered that certainty no longer appealed. He’d seen the wonders and terrors of multiple worlds, and for some it may have been enough for a lifetime.

But Ianto still wanted to explore the galaxies reflected in Jack’s eyes.


End file.
